Ranked-choice voting may delay results

Some cities in Alameda County have waited for years to have ranked-choice voting. Now, they may have to wait a little longer for Nov. 2 election results.

Dave Macdonald, Alameda County's registrar of voters, said his office may not have meaningful results for elections using ranked-choice voting until at least three days after the election.

Even then, Macdonald said, those results may not paint a completely accurate picture until his office counts all the votes, likely sometime the following week.

That means the outcome of the much-anticipated Oakland and San Leandro mayor's races, among a handful of others, may not be known until days after the election. Hotly contested City Council races in Oakland and Berkeley also may remain undecided for a while after election.

Voters in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro approved moving to ranked-choice voting -- also known as instant-runoff voting -- years ago. The system eliminates the need for local primaries by allowing voters to rank a first-, second- and third-choice candidate for a single office -- allowing a voter to select candidates in order of preference.

If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote when ballots are tallied, the ranked-choice voting system will kick in. The system starts eliminating candidates from the bottom up. When a voter's first choice is eliminated, their second choice is then counted. This process of elimination occurs until a candidate has 50 percent of the overall vote.

Advertisement

However, for the system to work, all votes must be accounted for before the system can begin.

Macdonald said it typically takes his office days to go through mail-in ballots that are dropped off at polling places on Election Day, as well as the provisional ballots that must be checked by hand.

Provisional ballots are those given to people whose eligibility to vote is in dispute. If their eligibility is confirmed, the vote counts.

Macdonald said his office will release regular vote tally numbers starting late Tuesday night in all races, like it always does, but will not run the first ranked-choice voting algorithm until Friday -- when most of the votes should be in and counted. However, Macdonald warns those results still could change in following days, depending on how many votes his office still may have to wade through.

"We'll work through that weekend and see where we get," Macdonald said.

Of course, if a candidate receives a majority of the vote during the first tally of vote counting, the result of an election could be clear by early the morning after Election Day. However, in races with many candidates -- there are 10 people vying for Oakland mayor -- the likelihood of someone getting more than 50 percent of the vote after the initial tally and no candidates being eliminated would seem unlikely.

Ranked-choice voting will be used only in local Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro races, and will not affect the election of county, state and federal officials or the approval or rejection of ballot measures.